Re: Looping tracks with digital hard disk recorders

[Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>]

Hi Michael-
    The audible click you hear is almost certainly a soundwave being 
chopped
off. If there's any sound at all at the edit point, the rapid change in
waveform from some kind of wavey wave to an instantaneous drop to zero
creates an audio spike. In order to eliminate this spike, you need to be
able to "edit the edit point." If you can view the wave at the edit point
and insert a tiny (2-3ms) fade out/fade in, you can eliminate the click. I
don't know if the Tascam has this kind of editing power.
    I own a Korg D1600mkII, which allows this kind of editing. I can view
one track at a time, see the cliff/wall of the edit point, and choose a 
nice
point before/after the edit point to fade out/in. Once I've edited the 
front
and back of my intended loop, I can copy and paste the loop without
generating more clicks. Most folks do this in Pro Tools or one of those
software programs that turns the sound into pretty seismographic wiggles on
their computer screens.
    Then there arise all sorts of aesthetic decisions about the tiny bit of
silence. Is it audible? If not, mission accomplished. If so, you can either
play it up, giving the track that "look! I'm looping!" quality (can be cool
or cliched, depending) or you can layer something else over the point to
minimize it - a little reverb, a little delay, another track, whatever.
    Best of luck,
Douglas Baldwin, coyote-at-large
www.thecoyote.org
coyotelk@optonline.net

"Let these minutes and hours
Show my mind strange new flowers"
- Jackson Browne